Applying an emotion regulation framework to integrative approaches to generalized anxiety disorder.

Integrative conceptualizations like that proposed byRoemer and Orsillo provide exciting new directions forunderstanding and treating generalized anxiety disorder(GAD). However, these approaches may be furtherstrengthened by adoption of an emotion regulationperspective. Persons with GAD may have difficulty un-derstanding their emotional experience and may pos-sess few skills to modulate their emotions. They mayexperience emotions as subjectively aversive and useworry and maladaptive interpersonal behaviors as de-fensive strategies to control, avoid, or blunt emotionalexperience. An emotion regulation perspective suggestsadding treatment components to help clients becomemore comfortable with arousing emotional experience,more able to access and utilize emotional informationin adaptive problem solving, and better able to modu-late emotional experience and expression according tocontextual demands.Key words: emotion regulation, generalized anxietydisorder. [Clin Psychol Sci Prac 9:85–90, 2002]